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Terry’s note: This two-part series is from a chapter by the same name I wrote in one of my books years ago. Also, I’ve presented it in other published/posted forums. It is more relevant now than ever, so wanted to share it again. (Foreshocks of Antichrist, Harvest House, 1997)

Continuing on the deadly effects of drugs in these last days…

A recent news item testifies that politicians and their mouthpieces view the drug problem as nothing to be concerned about, even if their own staff members are alleged to be heavily involved in illicit drug usage.

Barry McCaffrey, national drug control policy director, asked in Washington that all politicians stop trying to make an issue of whether an opponent has used drugs because “no good can come from it,” adding, “Drug use was a generational thing, and we should just accept that and move on.” Drug infection gushes through the nation’s and the world’s bloodstream, not only degenerating thought processes, but feeding lust and greed as well. Paul’s words ring true today: “The love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10).

People of the great Tribulation era will not repent of their sorceries because, like the addicts and dealers of this present hour, they will be willing to pay any price to continue feeding their insatiable appetites. The tremendous growth we are witnessing in illicit drug trade is a foreshock of the coming Antichrist and his system–a system that will, no doubt, at the outset of Antichrist’s reign, promise seemingly brilliant solutions to all problems, including those involving illicit drugs.

The Economic Abyss

Governmental and business institutions grow increasingly concerned about instability within world money markets. Stock market record highs, followed by wild fluctuations, cause worry and sometimes panic for global financial analysts. Despite the chaos, international banking conglomerates continue to merge and meld and network into what surely will soon become a one- world economic order.

The exponential growth in computer technology is without question moving our generation toward the time prophesied in Revelation 13.

Again, Antichrist will offer solutions to unbelievably complex fiscal problems produced when the four horsemen of the Apocalypse ride across the world, bringing war, famine, pestilence, and death. “It’s the economy, stupid” might have been a catchy–if somewhat deceptive–political slogan during the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign. Such a slogan will not be necessary during that future time of tremendous economic turmoil. Everyone will be agonizingly aware of the abyss in which they will be mired. They will beg the beast and his totalitarian system of computer control to institute world order.

Gods of the Abyss

New Age thought runs throughout government, business, and religion at all levels. Sadly, even evangelical Christianity suffers with New Age infection.

The same serpent who seduced Adam and Eve with the lie promising that they would be as God when they ate from the forbidden tree now whispers in the desensitized ears of this generation the same lie: ” You will become gods when you follow the New Age pathways laid out for you by the ascended masters.” But they are pathways leading to the end-time abyss of apocalypse.

Lucifer’s soothing lie that proposes many ways to God’s salvation salves the guilt-ridden conscience of fallen man. It appeals to the supremely arrogant pride that mankind inherited from father Adam when that first man determined to disobey his Creator and instead accept Satan’s offer of godhood.

People today by and large think of salvation, of going to Heaven when they die, as obtainable through self effort. If one lives a good life, God will weigh this against the bad and the person will be found worthy based upon his or her personal accomplishments on the side of good. People need no atoning sacrifice by Jesus Christ to save them. Such is a narrow-minded concept they reject, even though the still, small voice convicts them of the truth during those lonely, empty times when their souls yearn for something, for someone, to fill the void.

Doug Groothuis, assistant professor at Denver Seminary and noted researcher and author on the New Age movement, recently pointed out who Jesus Christ is–rather, who He was, according to New Age thinking. He addressed the fact that New Age thought proclaims that there is no need for a Redeemer. Groothuis said:

The emphasis on Christ is not Christ as the unique and final liberator, the saviour of the human race because of what He’s done through His [crucifixion and resurrection], but that He is kind of an example, the model for what we can do. Jesus was a man who [tapped into] the Christ energy for the Christ Potential…. It’s not biblical Christianity at all.

Groothuis, in further explaining the insidious influence the New Age movement inflicts on this generation, talked about Jean Houston, the New Age guru who spent considerable time with America’s First Lady in the White House during the summer of 1996 as part of the now-famous Eleanor Roosevelt contact incident.

Groothuis said:

[Jean Houston] is very influential. She leads seminars all over the country and in fact all over the world basically on how to release the divine potential within us all. She has referred to herself as a global midwife. She means by that…we all have god within us. We all have the fullness of [deity] within us. But that somehow this god within us is stuck and we don’t realize it, we don’t actualize it so it’s up to people like her to tell us we are divine and how to put that energy out into the world.

Groothuis went on to say that New Age theosophy purports that there is a latent, divine energy that makes up the universe. God is that energy. But there is no distinction between the Creator and the creation. Everything is one and we are all part of that great cosmic unity.

Groothuis said that according to Jean Houston and other New Age thinkers:

The problem of the human race, the reason we have ecological problems, military crises, economic crises, etc., is not because of human sin against a holy God that has affected us all. It’s because somehow we are suffering from a kind of divine amnesia. We have forgotten the divinity within ourselves. So her role is to be a catalyst or midwife to bring out the latent divinity inside of all of us.

Groothuis said that consulting channelers, mediums, and indulging in other occult techniques to achieve one’s goals instead of going to God in prayer is dangerous. He said, “in fact, doing this sort of thing can lead to some kind of encounter with the demonic. We have to remember that Paul said Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light…. If [anything] is leading away from Christ and His gospel, then it’s not of God.”‘

Despite such warnings, mankind strives pridefully closer to the abyss and eternal separation from God. One of the New Age movement’s most renowned contemporary leaders sums up the audacious claim that man does not need God because he is God!

The great and growing interest in Eastern philosophy and religion, in reincarnation or the law of rebirth and the power of mind over matter, is part of a great shift in consciousness taking place everywhere and is a direct result of our sense that the old molds of thought and feeling are no longer adequate to express our growing awareness of reality, thus revealing a readiness for a new revelation.

This spiritual awakening must eventually lead to an era of world brotherhood–the keynote of the coming Age of Aquarius.

What is happening now is the outcome of inner forces that are affecting great changes in human thinking and consciousness. This will result in the complete reorganization of the world’s institutions and social structures that no longer answer man’s true need. This will entail the reorganization of our political, economic, and financial systems along more rational and just lines.

New Agers will achieve their paradigm shift to a society that is the antithesis of what God intended for man. The most vicious dictator ever known will then rule over that darkest period in human history, the black abyss of Apocalypse.

The Bridge over the Abyss

People do not need to discover, then nurture, the Christ-consciousness within themselves. No such entity exists. People need Jesus Christ to fulfill the God-shaped void that exists within every man, woman, and child born since Adam brought sin into the world, thus separating himself and his progeny from God.

The Carpenter of Nazareth rebuilt the bridge over the abyss of eternal separation with timber constructed in the shape of the old rugged cross, upon which He willingly bled and died for you and me. Christ’s atoning sacrifice is God’s chosen way to reconcile us to Himself. There is none other.

Foreshocks of the coming Antichrist are everywhere. Those fearful signals that the Beast of Revelation 13 could very soon make his appearance upon the world stage should produce for the Christian not excitement based upon fear, but excitement based upon joyful anticipation. We are promised not Antichrist but Jesus Christ! (Read Revelation 3:10 and John 14.)

No prophecy stands between this generation and the Rapture. Christ’s return for His Church in the air above planet Earth is imminent. You, too, can be part of those who excitedly anticipate that unimaginably exhilarating microsecond when Jesus shouts “COME UP HITHER!”

Accept Him today and receive God’s inward peace which assures that in life or in death, you are His own. So shall we ever be with the Lord.

5 Comments

Brother Terry, gave away 5 copies of Rapture, Ready or not to people including a baptist pastor. Have told many people the evidence for the soon 7 year trib. and how close the rapture must be. Almost nobody responds at all. My question to you is this…..if people are saved, born again, how is such indifference possible?

I believe it is largely that the seminaries don’t teach eschatology to any extent. And, to the extent they do they teach, they teach amillennialism (there is no 1000 year Reign of Christ on earth.)

The protestant reformers didn’t see a pre-Millennial, pre-Tribulation return as given in the Bible. Most theologians haven’t been taught this truth, therefore people in the pews never come to an understanding of the Rapture, the Tribulation, and the Second Advent.

Another reason is that most believers are just too caught up in this world system to care about looking for the Blessed Hope.

Here again we see the symptoms of “reprobate minds.” Such minds are increasingly incapable of recognizing truth from fiction. In a very real way, I see it as a kind of insanity which is growing daily across the entire earth. In this context is is very easy to see how the father of lies, the devil, will get his henchmen the Antichrist and False Prophet into power.

This mental affliction has long ago found a home not only in the secular world, but most of the modern church. It seems that most seminaries are doing a great job turning out heretics who then spread their false doctrines amongst the laity, just like a virus. Those of us who hold to the truth and authority of the Bible are now a shrinking minority.

This was true in Jesus time when only the only two members of the Sanhedrin, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemas, had it right about Jesus while the others demanded that the Roman authorities execute him. Even back then the “reprobate madness” was there. It actually began with Adam and Eve and it is only getting worse with time.

Nevertheless, our strength isn’t in the numbers, but in the One we believe in.